Company - History

1888

Burrelle's® Press Clipping Bureau formed in New York City after founder Frank Burrelle overheard two businessmen lament the difficulty of keeping up with the news in the papers. Burrelle and his wife transformed their kitchen table to a press clipping bureau, pulling from New York City newspapers the news of interest to his customers. For this service, Burrelle's charged three cents per clip (newspapers cost two cents back then). The company primarily served individual customers in the early days -- New York's movers and shakers whose goings-on were reported by the city's dozen or so newspapers.

In Boston of the same year, Boston Globe employee Robert Luce recruited his brother Linn Luce to help with what he envisioned as a side business in news clippings. For the first few weeks, Linn did it all -- the reading, the cutting, and the mailing. In less than six months, business was booming, other employees were added to the staff, and Robert Luce left the Boston Globe to focus full time on the clipping business.

1910

After the death of founder Frank Burrelle, his wife Nellie Burrelle took over Burrelle's Clipping Service.

1911

After the death of Nellie Burrelle her two sisters became the owners.

1918

Fredrick John Wynne became the owner of Burrelle's Clipping Service.

1928

Arthur Wynne and his brother, Harold Wynne, took over Burrelle's Clipping Service.

1935

Burrelle's Clipping Service achieved full national newspaper coverage.

1940

Burrelle's Clipping Service added magazine coverage.

1951

Southwest Clippings, owned by the French family, purchases Luce Press Clippings from Harvard, which had owned the business after Robert Luce's death.

Burrelle's created Express®, a service that sent the day's headlines and brief news summaries to busy execs. Express used a newfangled technology called the FAX machine. In some cases, Burrelle's salespeople had to first explain what a FAX machine was before touting the advantages of Express.

1994

Burrelle's introduces the NewsAlert online monitoring service, based on electronic newspapers, wire services, and broadcast content. Burrelle's entered into its first use agreement with a publication, establishing the company as a leader in copyright compliance in the media monitoring arena.

BurrellesLuce launches the first turnkey copyright compliance program for media relations professionals.

BurrellesLuce celebrated its 120th year of excellence in media monitoring.

Fresh Ideas, BurrellesLuce corporate blog, launches.

2009

BurrellesLuce officially launches BurrellesLuce iMonitor®, its self-guided media monitoring tool that powers instant searches covering the most local, national, and international news from free and subscription sources, including social media.

2010

BurrellesLuce introduces BurrellesLuce WorkFlow™, its comprehensive suite of affordable services integrated into one convenient and simple to use portal. BurrellesLuce licenses Social Media Monitoring (Engage121) to provide the most comprehensive social media management application and introduces BurrellesLuce ContactsPlus™ (powered by Engage121), a revolutionary way for communications professionals to connect and engage individually with print and online journalists and bloggers based on the writer’s most recent body of work.

2012

BurrellesLuce acquires the U.S. print monitoring operations of Cision and becomes the only media monitoring service to provide print coverage. Robert C. Waggoner, chairman and CEO of BurrellesLuce, said, "Our U.S. based production is perfectly positioned to deliver comprehensive and timely service to the Cision print monitoring clients. The PR community has made it clear that the image of the article is very important in showing ROI on their initiatives, which text alone doesn't provide. He added, "Since 1994 BurrellesLuce has had copyright compliance program that positions us to continue to deliver this important service to the PR and communications community, a service that allows them to keep the integrity of benchmarked results."